The Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003

Overview

These Regulations make provision to secure the proper conduct of employment agencies and employment businesses and to protect the interests of persons using their services. The Regulations place several restrictions on work-seekers and hirers, namely on the use of additional services, providing work-seekers during industrial disputes, paying work-seekers' renumeration and the prohibition on employment businesses withholding payment to work-seekers on certain grounds.

For the case of these Regulations:

• an employment agency is a business that finds permanent roles where the work-seeker is employed by the hirer either short or long term;
• an employment business is a business that finds and supplies temporary work-seekers roles with hirers; 
• work-seekers are people who are looking for or being found work through an agency – this includes self-employed persons and limited company work-seekers; and
• hirers are the agency’s client that the work-seeker is introduced or supplied to and carries out work for.